Showing papers in "Quarterly Journal of Speech in 2013"
TL;DR: House of My Sojourn is an uneven read, and Sutton is more adept at explicating the barriers to women’s authoritative rhetorical practice than at offering an innovative way to overcome them, despite her vow to rebuild the house of rhetoric.
Abstract: hungry for a more concrete prescription, it is fully in keeping with the book’s tone. Ultimately, House of My Sojourn is an uneven read. From my perspective, the case studies*in particular those in chapters three and four*make the clearest and most useful contributions to the study of women’s rhetoric. Sutton is more adept at explicating the barriers to women’s authoritative rhetorical practice than at offering an innovative way to overcome them, despite her vow to rebuild the house of rhetoric. The fanciful comparisons, imagined scenarios, and sometimes vexing vocabulary can be off-putting, but the style is clearly part of the point of the exercise. Sutton wants to envision a future that can transcend the problems of the past, and she takes a great deal of rhetorical license to do so. The result, always erudite, is often enlightening and occasionally perplexing, but it is never dull.
179 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a case study of breast cancer genomics is examined to explore the ways in which racial discourse depends upon another bodily attribute: sex, and the case study is placed within a broader history of race and sex, a rhetorical enactment essential to maintaining a racialized social and economic order.
Abstract: Employing the theoretical perspective known as performativity, this essay rethinks the notion of racial discourse. The essay takes biomedicine as an important site wherein racial ontologies are performatively enacted and argues that we need to historicize race and rhetoric in order to understand how racial ideology adapts to different material conditions. The particular case of breast cancer genomics is examined to explore the ways in which racial discourse depends upon another bodily attribute: sex. By situating the case study within a broader history of race and sex, the essay delineates how the body within breast cancer genomics produces race anew, a rhetorical enactment essential to maintaining a racialized—and racist—social and economic order.
32 citations
TL;DR: Banks, Adam J. as mentioned in this paper, Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011), ix + 187 pp.
Abstract: Adam J. Banks, Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011), ix + 187 pp. $22.00 (paper). Adam J. Banks's book Digital Griots...
30 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, one epideictic dimension of Disney's Beauty and the Beast is analyzed to demonstrate how the film's combination of sophisticated rhetorical strategies might cultivate a romanticized understanding of and tolerance toward intimate partner violence among inter-generational audiences.
Abstract: This criticism analyzes one epideictic dimension of Disney's Beauty and the Beast to demonstrate how the film's combination of sophisticated rhetorical strategies might cultivate a romanticized understanding of and tolerance toward intimate partner violence among inter-generational audiences. The film departs from earlier legend versions by focusing exclusively on the romantic arc and introducing various kinds of violence and new characters to exercise, interpret, and accommodate that violence. Pivotal to this particular epideictic dimension's operation are Beast's violent acts toward Belle relative to Gaston's violence toward her, adult characters minimizing, justifying, or romanticizing in the presence of a child character the repeated signs of intimate partner violence, and those adults' efforts to facilitate a romance in spite of Beast's violence and Belle's reluctance. Disney featuring child character Chip, with his questions about romance and front-row seat to the title characters' relationship (inc...
30 citations
TL;DR: The authors pointed out that Black's essay mis-described key features of Robert Welch's Blue Book, which was his explicit example of right-wing discourse, and pointed out the role of pathos in both the rhetoric Black purported to critique and in the construction of his own audience.
Abstract: Edwin Black's essay on “The Second Persona,” introduced to rhetorical critics a rationale and model for a type of ideological criticism. Because it ignored the role of pathos in both the rhetoric Black purported to critique and in the construction of his own audience, Black's essay mis-described key features of Robert Welch's Blue Book, which was his explicit example of right-wing discourse. This critique of Black's essay invites readers to explore further the relationship between ideology and pathos and to expand our tools for building pathos and for examining pathos in public rhetoric, including the use of pathos in our own academic writing.
30 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze the rhetorical structures of the key stakeholders: China's claims about Tibet are characterized as presenting the patriotic rhetoric of modernizing communism; the Tibetan dissidents' resistance rhetoric is characterized as offering a testimonial rhetoric of catastrophic witnessing; and the "middle way" approach of His Holiness the Dalai Lama is questioned for its noble yet fruitless embodiment of the conflicted rhetoric of Buddhist care.
Abstract: The unprecedented wave of immolations sweeping through Tibet and ethnic-Tibetan-majority areas in China and India has re-ignited a global debate about China's actions in Tibet. Whereas the Chinese claim they have liberated Tibet from Buddhist feudalism and are modernizing the nation, many Tibetans argue they are the victims of a Communist-driven holocaust. In an attempt to map the communicative dynamics of this crisis, this essay analyzes the rhetorical structures of the key stakeholders: China's claims about Tibet are characterized as presenting the patriotic rhetoric of modernizing communism; the Tibetan dissidents' resistance rhetoric is characterized as offering a testimonial rhetoric of catastrophic witnessing; and the “middle way” approach of His Holiness the Dalai Lama is questioned for its noble yet fruitless embodiment of the conflicted rhetoric of Buddhist care. The situation in Tibet is wrapped up in issues of Chinese imperial ambitions and Tibetan counter-claims, globalizing capital and intern...
28 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that critical regionalism has the potential to offer a nuanced perspective on the geopolitical dimensions of memory places by exploring understandings of the relationship between local and national commemoration at these sites.
Abstract: In 2010–2011, the Nebraska History Museum featured two temporary exhibits: “We the People: the Nebraskan Viewpoint” and “Willa Cather: A Matter of Appearances.” We argue the public memories of Brandon Teena and Willa Cather contained in the exhibits are distanced from regional politics when articulated alongside the nostalgic regionalist rhetoric of the Nebraska History Museum. Specifically, both exhibits not only discipline the memory of trans* performance within problematic material and symbolic contexts, but also place these memories within a rhetoric of regional optimism that has critical consequences for restricting counter-public formation. In performing this reading, the essay argues that critical regionalism has the potential to offer a nuanced perspective on the geopolitical dimensions of memory places by exploring understandings of the relationship between “local” and “national” commemoration at these sites.
26 citations
TL;DR: This article propose the genealogical study of remembering and forgetting as recursive rhetorical capacities that enable discourse to place itself in an ever-changing present and define mnesis as the performative necessity to fold the past into the present so as to provide "now" with a sense of place.
Abstract: This essay proposes the genealogical study of remembering and forgetting as recursive rhetorical capacities that enable discourse to place itself in an ever-changing present. Mnesis is a meta-concept for the arrangements of remembering and forgetting that enable rhetoric to function. Most of the essay defines the materiality of mnesis, first noting the limitations of studying recursivity within dominant approaches remembering and forgetting in rhetorical studies, then describing mnesis as the performative necessity to fold the past into the present so as to provide “now” with a sense of place. After setting a foundation, the essay closes with a sketch of how to produce a genealogy of recursion.
26 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a visual rhetoric of containment, which limits the subjectivity of the racial Other and consolidates whiteness, is proposed, grounded in Karl Lagerfeld's Paris-Shanghai: A Fantasy.
Abstract: Grounding our evidence in Karl Lagerfeld's Paris-Shanghai: A Fantasy, a filmic homage to Coco Chanel, we theorize a “visual rhetoric of containment,” which limits the subjectivity of the racial Other and consolidates whiteness. The visual rhetoric of containment manifests in four ways: the creation and enactment of “the yellowface gaze,” which affirms whiteness through the eyes of the “native” Other, the affirmation of a post-feminist model of exchange, which objectifies the Chinese, the representation of Chanel as a master of place and order, and the conception of time as a constraint that Chanel, but not the Chinese people, can transcend.
25 citations
TL;DR: The human and economic costs of war in the United States have been extensively studied as mentioned in this paper. And the human cost of war has been shown to be greater than the cost of World War II.
Abstract: Our nation faces a number of grave problems today, but none is more dangerous to democracy than war. War saps resources, destroys bodies, and perverts public discussion. Of course, war is nothing new in the United States. Our nation is founded on the rhetoric of enemyship, and thus one hears distant roar of today’s violent rhetoric in the founding documents of the United States. What is new is the length and cost, both human and economic, of the various wars occurring under the openended umbrella of the ‘‘war on terror,’’ a conflict of perpetual exception with neither definite rhetorical boundaries nor a foreseeable end. The ongoing war in Afghanistan is the longest war in American history. Over 2,000 soldiers have died, and more than 68,000 have been wounded. The war has cost nearly $1.2 trillion, according to the US Department of Defense. The UN estimates that nearly 13,000 civilians have died in Afghanistan. The US invaded Iraq in 2003 and removed most of its remaining troops in December 2011. Iraq Body Count estimates that between 110,000 and 120,000 civilians died during the US war in Iraq, though this might be a terrible underestimate by hundreds of thousands. The Wall Street Journal projects that the Iraq War will cost US taxpayers $4 trillion, including the ever-accelerating health care costs for returning veterans. In sum, as The Christian Science monitor points out, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is greater than the cost of World War II. These wars, along with military action in Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya have US defense spending near all-time highs, doubling from 2001 to 2008: in 2011, 20 percent of the federal budget was spent on ‘‘defense’’ ($718 billion). Turning away from the monetized discourses of neo-liberalism, we can already see that the human costs of war are of themselves unacceptable. Rhetorical critics must describe and ultimately demystify the discourses justifying war. We must do this not merely to exercise our critical chops but instead to instruct
23 citations
TL;DR: Lincoln, on a day in April, 1837, lured by the rainbow of opportunity that seemed to flame over Springfield, and wearing the orchid that Springfield had pinned on him for services rendered in makin...
Abstract: Lincoln, on a day in April, 1837, lured by the rainbow of opportunity that seemed to flame over Springfield, and wearing the orchid that Springfield had pinned on him for services rendered in makin...
TL;DR: GoodGoodale as mentioned in this paper, Sonic Persuasion: Reading Sound in the Recorded Age (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), xi + 189 pp. $75.00 (cloth), $27.34 (e-book).
Abstract: Greg Goodale, Sonic Persuasion: Reading Sound in the Recorded Age (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), xi + 189 pp. $75.00 (cloth), $27.00 (paper), $14.34 (e-book). Sonic Persuasion emerge...
TL;DR: This paper argued that a rationalizing discourse emerged that scapegoated the shooter as a weak-minded immigrant and offered a vision of democracy that required citizens have the fitness to rise above group identities and passions and take on the sober-minded responsibility of self-governance.
Abstract: As an ideal, democracy has long been understood as a balance between oligarchy and ochlocracy. In practice, this balancing act has to be articulated within specific socio cultural contexts. This essay examines one such articulation in the discursive response to the assassination of President McKinley in 1901 at the hands of self-proclaimed anarchist Leon Czolgosz. It does so by understanding McKinleyapos;s death as domestic trauma—a shocking event that threatened the nation's democratic identity. In response to this traumatic event, this essay ultimately argues a rationalizing discourse emerged that scapegoated the shooter as a weak-minded immigrant and offered a vision of democracy that required citizens have the fitness to rise above group identities and passions and take on the sober-minded responsibility of self-governance.
TL;DR: This article argued that the stasis of jurisdiction operates as a mode of assemblage of discourses, institutions, and populations, and argued that women did not emerge as constituents but as tools of public policy.
Abstract: Through its analysis of the rhetorical means by which the US Congress overcame jurisdictional objections to federal action on the issue of woman suffrage, this essay argues that the stasis of jurisdiction operates as a mode of assemblage of discourses, institutions, and populations. In Congress, the woman suffrage issue helped re-organize federal and state prerogatives over the management of racial and ethnic relations at home and US leadership abroad. Thus, from a governmental perspective women did not emerge as constituents but as tools of public policy. As a legislative precedent, the 19th Amendment debates prompt critical attention to the particular constraints that the discourses of state institutions pose for feminist political change.
TL;DR: Part history and part critical analysis, Rock the Nation as discussed by the authors highlights an alternative and forgotten history of rock music, a history in which Latina/os played an instrumental role in rock music.
Abstract: Part historiography and part critical analysis, Rock the Nation highlights an alternative and forgotten history of rock music—a history in which Latina/os played an instrumental role. However, to s...
TL;DR: In this article, a sustained rhetorical analysis of Jens Lien's award-winning 2006 Norwegian film, The Bothersome Man, demonstrates how the film employs entropic satire to map and critique the cultural logic of late capitalism.
Abstract: This essay inquires into the pedagogical and political dimensions of art in the contemporary moment. Specifically, it seeks to reanimate Fredric Jameson's notion of “cognitive mapping,” which he introduced as a response to the postmodern problem of representing the social totality. To that end, the essay begins by explicating the twin impulses of cognitive mapping. It, then, undertakes a sustained rhetorical analysis of Jens Lien's award-winning 2006 Norwegian film, The Bothersome Man, demonstrating how the film employs entropic satire to, at once, map and critique the cultural logic of late capitalism. The essay concludes by reflecting on the important contributions rhetorical scholars can make to a renewed interest in cognitive mapping.
TL;DR: Huerta's use of a shifting transcendent persona to balance the sense of mystery surrounding her accomplishments with a performance of normalcy and audience identification was explored by as mentioned in this paper, who found that Huerta leveraged her borderland experiences and ideology as rhetorical resources that functioned to facilitate the amalgamation of personae exemplifying her advocacy.
Abstract: The present analysis explores Dolores Huerta's use of a shifting transcendent persona to balance the sense of mystery surrounding her accomplishments with a performance of normalcy and audience identification. We find, first, that Huerta leveraged her borderland experiences and ideology as rhetorical resources that functioned to facilitate the amalgamation of personae exemplifying her advocacy, and, second, that her shifting transcendent persona's balance of mystery and identification hinged as much upon the manner in which she positioned audience members to perceive themselves as it did upon the manner in which she positioned them to perceive her own exceptional normalcy.
TL;DR: The authors argue that there is still much to be gained critically, theoretically, and politically by taking collective, rhetorical production of white affect, particularly the retrieval of immigrant pain, as seriously as those who manipulate it.
Abstract: Political advocates on the ideological right have long taken seriously what their counterparts on the left have not: white racialized affect. As left activists and scholars have alternately lamented and raged over the steady creep of the “middle” to the “right,” they have documented in detail the outcomes of whites' refusal to engage in “genuine” racial atonement. I argue in this essay that there is still much to be gained critically, theoretically, and politically by taking collective, rhetorical production of white affect, particularly the retrieval of immigrant pain, as seriously as those who manipulate it. Key to that construction in the past two decades has been the archival and circulation of “the immigrant experience” in popular documentary films featuring Ellis Island. The success of “white rights” rhetorics owes much to equating and substituting that story for the mythos of “the nation of immigrants” as a whole.
TL;DR: In the French Resistance, the songs represented resisters as the guardians of true Frenchness, an identity that excluded collaborators from the national community and robbed them of political legitimacy as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: During the German Occupation from 1940 to 1944, members of the French Resistance sang folk songs to legitimize their movement in the face of widespread support for collaboration and brutal police attacks. Reprising a performative tradition of French political singing, Resistance fighters deployed national narratives and parody to define themselves as transhistorical French heroes while also practicing democratic forms they sought to safeguard. In this way, the songs represented resisters as the guardians of true “Frenchness,” an identity that excluded collaborators from the national community and robbed them of political legitimacy.
TL;DR: The Violence of Rhetoric as discussed by the authors already asserts a grammatical relationship between its two key terms, rhetoric and violence, linking them by the little word "of", the relationship po...
Abstract: The title of this forum, “The Violence of Rhetoric,” already asserts a grammatical relationship between its two key terms, rhetoric and violence. Linked by the little word “of,” the relationship po...
TL;DR: A strange thing happened in Iowa on the evening of January 18, 2004 and in the days afterward: Howard Dean and the press reaction to his post-Iowa Caucus scream gave those of us in the field incentive to return again to the voice as an object of study as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: A strange thing happened in Iowa on the evening of January 18, 2004 and in the days afterward. At the same time that Speech Communication Departments around the country were relegating the term ‘‘Speech’’ to the wastebasket, Howard Dean and the press reaction to his post-Iowa Caucus scream gave those of us in the field incentive to return again to the voice as an object of study. Dean’s speech, famous now because of the media’s overreaction, demonstrates why tone, timbre, and pitch are critical to the study of politics in a democracy. Dean’s ‘‘scream’’ ended his campaign. If political talking-heads and editorialists had been knowledgeable about the voice, they would have recognized both its power and how amplification can distort that power. One reporter was sophisticated about sound. Joel Roberts wrote for the CBS webpage:
TL;DR: In the Twilight of the Idols as discussed by the authors, two origins sit in opposition, that of language in civi cation and language in culture, and that of the language itself.
Abstract: “Increscunt animi, virescit volnere virtus” (Spirits grow, strength strengthens by vulnerability)—Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols 1 Two origins sit in opposition—that of language in civi...
TL;DR: Jensen as discussed by the authors, Dirty Words: The Rhetoric of public sex education, 1870-1924 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), xxiv + 201 pp.
Abstract: Robin E. Jensen, Dirty Words: The Rhetoric of Public Sex Education, 1870–1924 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), xxiv + 201 pp. $75.00 (cloth), $25.00 (paper). What should Americans know...
[...]
TL;DR: The Julian calendar, to cite a classic example, reform the prior Roman calendar by order of its namesake, Julius Caesar as mentioned in this paper, was a potent symbol not only of Julius Caesar's newfound authority but also of an empire that believed it had the power to reorder time.
Abstract: Time is political. Institutions, economies, and governing regimes directly and indirectly influence how entire populations live out their time on earth. For millennia, ascendant rulers instituted new calendars that communicated temporal structures unlike those of their predecessors. The Julian calendar, to cite a classic example, reformed the prior Roman calendar by order of its namesake, Julius Caesar. The advent of this new time, which occurred in 708 AUC (ab urbe condita, or from ‘‘the founding of the city’’) according to prior Roman dating, is recorded in the more familiar, post-Christian 46 BC (‘‘before Christ’’). ‘‘More than a simple adjustment,’’ David Ewing Duncan writes, ‘‘this reform was a potent symbol not only of Julius Caesar’s newfound authority but also of an empire that believed it had the power to reorder time.’’ Caesar’s commanded declaration of a new public epoch illustrates how political and religious institutions order time to convey authority over the past foundations and future destiny of an entire national or spiritual community. Doing so endows the power and authority of civic or religious rulers with such an ethos of historical inevitability and fundamental correctness that their reign appears coeval with the order of time itself. The ways that authoritative institutions invoke and order time as a means of consolidating and expressing power often engender violence. Conflicting interpretations of holy writ and spiritual obligation have incited bloody religious persecutions and armed conflicts for centuries. Slavoj Žižek contends that secular (not only religious) regimes justify radical police or military action by invoking apocalyptic senses of time: ‘‘Apocalyptic time is the time of the end of time, the time of emergency, of the state of exception when the end is nigh.’’ States of exception in liberal-democratic nations are also times of exception: executive authorities exercise unprecedented forms of violence both within and without national borders by citing as justification allegedly temporary episodes of state emergency.
TL;DR: In our relation to things, in so far as this relation is constituted by the way of vision, something slips, and that is what we call the gaze as discussed by the authors. But this is not the case for all relations.
Abstract: In our relation to things, in so far as this relation is constituted by the way of vision … something slips … that is what we call the gaze. —Jacques Lacan1 The consideration of the relation be...
TL;DR: Dubrofsky as mentioned in this paper, The Surveillance of Women on Reality Television: Watching 'The Bachelor' and 'The Bachelorette' (Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2011), vii + 151 pp.
Abstract: Rachel E. Dubrofsky, The Surveillance of Women on Reality Television: Watching “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” (Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2011), vii + 151 pp. $60.00 (cloth), $60.00 (e-b...